FORMER IRISH Olympic boxer Darren Sutherland was “distraught” during a telephone conversation on the day before he died, his trainer told an inquest yesterday.
During a 15-minute conversation on September 13th, 2009, Bryan Lawrence said the boxer had told him: “My life is over, my family have abandoned me.” Mr Lawrence went on: “I said, ‘What are you talking about? Have you had an argument with your family? It’s no big deal, everybody has arguments with their family’.”
However, Mr Lawrence said he had not called the 27-year-old’s manager, Frank Maloney, or anyone else after the call because he believed the boxer “had calmed down” by the end.
“I wasn’t troubled by it. I knew he had problems, but I did not think that he was going to do what he did,” he said, adding that he knew Sutherland was due to see a psychologist a day later.
Sutherland, regarded as a future professional boxing champion after winning a bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics, was found hanging from a radiator in his flat in Tetty Way, Bromley.
However, Mr Lawrence disagreed with assertions made on Monday that Sutherland had felt frightened of, or threatened by Mr Maloney, a long-standing boxing manager in London.
He had attended a meeting in Mr Maloney’s office on the Thursday before, along with psychologist Joe Dunbar, where they had asked the boxer “what was going on”.
Sutherland said he had lost confidence and that he did not know if he wanted to continue with his boxing career: “Frank said, ‘It’s up to you if you want to box anymore’,” Mr Lawrence said.
Mr Lawrence rejected any suggestion that Sutherland would have been forced to fight in a previously arranged bout a month later, even if a cut sustained in June had not healed.
“I said, ‘If it doesn’t heal you will not fight. I’ll decide that, not Frank’. We agreed that the fight on the 16th [of October] was off, anyway,” the trainer went on.
By the end of the meeting, Sutherland was enthusiastic again about boxing: “He said, ‘I am a fighter. I know what I am meant to do. I am a fighter’.” During it, Mr Maloney had told the boxer “to grow up”, adding Sutherland could not walk away from his £100,000-a-year contract and keep a £70,000 signing-on fee if he then signed up with a different promoter.
Earlier, Mr Dunbar said Sutherland had said “almost jokingly” weeks before his death that “he felt trapped and wanted to kill himself.
“But he told me not to worry because he didn’t have the balls to do it. It was said in a jovial way,” said Mr Dunbar, who said he did not take it seriously then, though he became more worried as time passed.
Mr Dunbar raised the alarm after he could not contact him on the Monday and, later, he and Mr Maloney found Sutherland’s body when they got the keys to the Bromley flat.
The boxer had been in “a depressed state and needed help”, he said, adding: “I was not surprised he killed himself. Because of the conversations I had had with him that week and him being incredibly low, when I couldn’t get hold of him [on Monday] I was worried he had done what he’d done,” he said.
Sutherland’s friend, Ismay Bourke, said the boxer had an anxiety attack one night when they were together in his flat and told her he was “frightened” of Mr Maloney.
